Cardinals’ Patented Escape Act Caps Magical First Round of Playoffs

The Cardinals stunned the Nationals by scoring four runs in the ninth to return to the N.L.C.S.Credit
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

WASHINGTON — The first round of baseball’s postseason unfolded spectacularly into a full week of high and prolonged drama.

Each of the four matchups lasted the full five games, and one after another the unlikely moments came: The Oakland Athletics overcame a two-run ninth-inning deficit Wednesday against the Detroit Tigers to stave off elimination for another day. Raul Ibanez of the Yankees bashed a pair of late, dramatic home runs against the Baltimore Orioles during an unexpected pinch-hitting cameo for Alex Rodriguez. The San Francisco Giants won three straight games away from home to advance past the Cincinnati Reds.

And the final moments of the opening round, which played out just past midnight Saturday morning in Washington, were perhaps the most unbelievable.

The St. Louis Cardinals, the defending World Series champions, were two runs behind the Washington Nationals and one strike away from being dumped unceremoniously out of the playoffs. Minutes later, they were congregating on the mound at Nationals Park, bouncing up and down and celebrating an unthinkable 9-7 victory in front of 45,966 eerily silent fans.

While Matheny appeared entranced in a pleasurable daze, the Nationals looked shellshocked. They spent all but a handful of days during the regular season atop the National League East and cruised into the playoffs with the most regular-season victories in baseball. Theirs was a fairy tale story of sorts, these upstarts, third-place finishers last year, who brought playoff baseball back to Washington for the first time since 1933. Their story was ultimately short-lived.

It was so quiet inside the home clubhouse after the loss that the sound of players’ consoling hugs — palms and forearms pounding upon sunken shoulders — was clearly audible.

“We proved our worth,” Nationals Manager Davey Johnson said, “and we just need to let this be a lesson, learn from it, have more resolve, come back and carry it a lot further.”

The Cardinals’ clubhouse was riotous. For the second straight year, they squeezed into the playoffs. For the second straight year, they have knocked off the team with baseball’s best record in the first round. They will try, for the second straight year, to win the championship as a wild-card team igniting at the most opportune time.

“They can do this,” said Matheny, standing now inside the Champagne-soaked clubhouse. “It’s not just that they think they can. It’s not they believe they can. They know they can. And that goes a long ways.”

The experience of last October has been invoked throughout this past week. During Game 6 of that World Series, the Cardinals were trailing the Texas Rangers by 7-5 in the ninth inning and by 9-7 in the 10th before winning, 11-10, with a home run in the 11th. They clinched the title the next day.

There were echoes of that during this most recent comeback. As with last year, they entered the ninth inning trailing, 7-5. Drew Storen, a righty reliever, gave up an inning-opening double to Carlos Beltran, then got the next two outs. But Yadier Molina, who fell to a 2-2 count, drew a walk. David Freese, who fell to a 1-2 count, did the same.

Daniel Descalso came up and smacked a single off the glove of shortstop Ian Desmond, scoring two to tie the game. Then Peter Kozma, a 24-year-old rookie who joined the team on Aug. 31, knocked a single to right, scoring two more. Half an inning later, the entire team was bounding joyously onto the infield.

“Eventually, I’m sure it’ll be a learning process,” said Storen, who slumped by his locker for several minutes after the game. “But we’ve got to let that wound heal, I guess, first.”

Over the last two postseasons, the Cardinals are 6-0 when facing the prospect of elimination.

“When things look the worst, they just keep chipping away,” General Manager John Mozeliak said afterward. “As we said last year all the time, ‘We live for another day.’ Now we know we’re living for four more.”

The final game of this series was a drama that played out in three disparate acts.

First, there was euphoria, this widespread sense of joyous inevitability. The crowd was announced at 45,966, a new high for Nationals Park. Five minutes before the start of the game, Gio Gonzalez walked in from the Nationals’ bullpen accompanied to a rhythmic crescendo of chanting — “Gio, Gio, Gio” — that would reverberate throughout the game. Then David Gregory, the host of “Meet the Press” and a regular at Nationals Park, appeared on the jumbo screen, eyes wide, and yelled, “Let’s play ball!” as he pumped his fists twice above his head.

The Nationals kept their fans bouncing in the first inning, as Bryce Harper clobbered a run-scoring triple before Ryan Zimmerman pounded a two-run home run to right-center. The early romp continued in the third when Harper, who entered the game hitting .056 this postseason, led off the third inning with a towering home run into the right-field stands. Two batters later, Michael Morse belted a two-run homer into the visitors’ bullpen in left field.

Then, after the early deluge came a slow and tantalizing trickle of runs from the Cardinals. They scratched one off Gonzalez in the fourth, and two more off him during a 36-pitch fifth.

It continued this way against the bullpen. They got another in the seventh through Matt Holliday’s run-scoring groundout. Then Descalso hit an arching solo home run off Tyler Clippard to open the eighth. Nationals fans let out more of a collective exhale than a cheer when Kurt Suzuki slapped a run-scoring single to center in the eighth, restoring a two-run cushion.

“We were right there and we had it,” Desmond said. “We were good enough to be leading in the ninth inning by two runs against the defending world champions, a team that has all the experience in the world and every other thing they got going on there.”

They had it, and then they did not. In the final act of the night, the final unbelievable moment of baseball’s first round of playoff games, the exhales turned to gasps.

A version of this article appears in print on October 13, 2012, on page D2 of the New York edition with the headline: Cardinals’ Patented Escape Act Caps Magical First Round of Playoffs. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe